


Rey

by CentrauGuardian



Series: Whole [4]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 21:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8343025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CentrauGuardian/pseuds/CentrauGuardian
Summary: It's perhaps the cruelest torture of all, placing her so close and yet utterly outside of his reach. She sleeps across from, even as he screams and desperately defends their secrets and all he loves from the brutality of Kylo Ren.He has found her, and still she is so far away from him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: Torture, mind invasion.
> 
> Because I couldn't leave it there.

Kylo Ren’s daemon is a cat, and it takes Finn a long time, in the few quiet moments he gets, to reconcile this with the image he has of the Sith. It’s not even like the daemon is a big cat, like a lion, or tiger or something fierce and powerful like that.

No, Kylo Ren’s soul is apparently best characterised by an every day house cat.

Finn thinks Poe would laugh for days on end at that knowledge. The jokes would ring out through the Alliance base for the rest of the war; something about an evil, powerful enemy having a simple domesticated cat as his daemon just takes away the edge of the fear, Finn feels.

When he’s feeling too numb and shattered to hide his despair behind strength, Finn realises that there is something awful about that as well. That someone with a house cat as a daemon shouldn’t be able to flay pieces from his soul with the gentle flicker of his fingers. That something must have taken this man and twisted and abused him until that warm, cozy soul had splintered and fractured into the monster that stands in its place.

There’s clearly something broken in the daemon itself, he muses, as he pants harshly following yet another siege against his mind. The cat sits in the darkest corners of the room, still and silent, keeping itself carefully from Kylo Ren’s attention. Most of the time it isn’t even there; it had taken a long time for Finn to realise that the cat only ever appeared when Kylo Ren was in the room, but often not even then. He’d struggled to pull the pieces together to figure out the cat was a daemon in the first place, and it was only the strangeness of its presence there that had him thinking about it all.

His own daemon hasn’t moved from where they strapped her down directly across from him. She sleeps deeply still, wires and tubes inserted under her skin pumping her full of toxins that hold her under even while he strains desperately for her to wake up. He feels her in his mind, a ball of lethargy and quiet that only rarely bubbles with anything more. The worst moments are when Kylo Ren strangles that connection; fists his grip around their bond and squeezes until Finn gasps franticly at the air, lungs burning with the strain as his mind narrows to that single point of agony, body shutting down extraneous functions as it feeds everything he has into holding open that tiny, fragile strand between them.

Now he’s found her, he can’t let her go. He drinks every breath hungrily, eyes locked to her when Kylo Ren doesn’t stand between them. She flickers wretchedly, as if her body can’t understand what it is now. Her colours bleed and her shape mutates briefly before she falls back into solidity.

He thinks they’ve damaged her. He’s certain they don’t care.

If ever there was a moment he wavered in his defiance, it is that thought that drags him back. He understands human cruelty; has lived it every day of his life. He understands human pain and torture and bending children into the moulds of soldiers.

He does not understand what they have done with the daemons. He cannot understand what would allow someone to take the physical manifestation of someone’s soul and lock it so tightly away that the person doesn’t realise they are walking around with half of themselves missing. The thought curdles inside of him and forms walls around his secrets; the secrets of the alliance. He looks at her and knows that even though she doesn’t have a choice in this, he will sacrifice them both to prevent Kylo Ren from discovering the secrets of his friends.

It infuriates the man, Finn knows. He knows it in the sharp crack of a fist against his ribs; in the unrelenting pressure of the Force against everything holding him together. Kylo Ren maintains that insidious grip against his mind even when he delights in trying to burn the secrets out of Finn’s flesh.

The cat watches all of this in silence and unearthly stillness. It does not move, only bears witness to the evil that Kylo Ren has succumbed to.

It takes Finn a long time to realise that Kylo Ren has left the room. He still whispers brokenly the letters and numbers of his designation and rank.

He hates that name, but it serves him well against torture.

The cat sits between him and her, back to Finn. He feels a numb surprise at the slight flick in the end of its tail as it observes the daemon strapped to the board in front of him. 

He tries to rouse himself to protest, to shout at the cat and scare it away from his soul.

It turns to look at him, eyes tired and worn, and he finds the protest dying in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” it tells him, voice toneless and flat. “I’m sorry” it says again, and turns to face him directly.

Finn isn’t quite sure if this is a trap. There’s a part of him that screams that this is all this could be, being Kylo Ren’s daemon. But another part of him, a part that resonates with his own bond and whispers of bonds beyond him, feels a great sorrow at what this daemon has faced in its lifetime, and eases the worry in his mind.

He blinks sluggishly at the cat, his right eye creasing in agony. It looks up at him and tells him “They are coming for you. Be strong a little longer” before turning and pacing away. The sound of doors opening and closing tells him it has left the room.

A ball of hope coils in his chest. She shifts suddenly, and a rumble echoes between them.

He can feel tendrils reaching for him, a whisper of determination and rage breathing into his mind.

He tucks himself around her and smiles as he settles down to wait.

+++++++

Sirens jar him from sleep. He jolts in the restraints, fire lacing up his legs into his pelvis as he gasps. He can hear noise all around him, pounding footsteps in the hallways, snapped commands and the clank of guns on armour as Stormtroopers race to battle. He looks over at her, finding her deep in sleep as always, the tubes still feeding her their poison. He listens as hard as he can, opens his mind as best as he can with his limited, fractured knowledge.

She finds him. Warmth curls around him, a brief moment of release from the aches and pains of his body before she lets go. It doesn’t matter. She knows where he is now and she is coming for him. He knows it.

He looks across at his daemon, wishing he could hold her and tell her that she is going to be safe.

And then Kylo Ren enters the room.

He isn’t wearing his helmet for once. The scar splitting his face is red and livid, the darkness he wields twisting the wound into something that mars every aspect of his features. Red has crept into the corners of his eyes and the snarl on his face feels natural.

Finn hastily throws up his walls again, terror lancing into his thoughts. He had assumed Kylo Ren would be elsewhere, joining in the fighting, preventing them from reaching him.  
Instead, Kylo Ren has sacrificed his pawns without a thought. The cat follows in behind him, tension in the way it hurries in after him. The fur on its back is mantled and Finn wonders exactly who and what it is afraid of.

Force slams into his mind without a warning, and Finn screams. Kylo Ren plunges his fingers into Finn’s throat, choking the sound from him. “Why are they here?” Kylo Ren howls at him, and Finn realises it in that moment.

The man cannot understand why people have come to save Finn. The boy cannot comprehend the thought of others caring so much that they will risk themselves to save one person.

He understands why Han Solo had to try. Even as Kylo Ren tears at his mind with a bellow of fury, Finn remembers that once this man was a boy named Ben. And perhaps the boy is still there. He glances at the cat, whose mouth is open in a yowl, and thinks that the boy is definitely still there.

Kylo Ren senses the thought, and stumbles back from Finn in horror and disbelief. His chest heaves and he stares at Finn, fine tremors ringing through his frame.

That is the moment when Rey finds them.

She bursts into the room with a roar, Sherri whirling in beside her. Her lightsabre chases all the shadows away as she lashes towards Kylo Ren, fury in every line of her body. Kylo Ren fumbles his lightsabre into her path, barely deflecting the killing blow. He falls back from the force of her, her presence soaking into every corner, the Force answering her war cry with fury of its own.

Sherri snarls at the cat once, before whipping towards Finn and whirling to defend him from the other daemon. He sees the minute she spots his own daemon, a sudden laxness in her muscles as she stares briefly, before shaking herself and posturing against the cat. Finn tries to open his mouth to tell her not to worry, but all that comes out is a croaked gasp of agony. Sherri bristles further on hearing it, and snaps at the cat who watches her warily.

Then Luke stalks into the room.

The Force rings with power and Kylo Ren hits the wall and stays there. Luke stops and looks at him, an expression Finn can’t even begin to understand on his face. There are words being exchanged there, words Finn can feel but can’t quite grasp as Kylo Ren sobs and rages against the hold pressing him against the metal.

Rey’s fingers are on the metal bindings around him then, and Finn sags as the catches release. Rey catches him, arms around his chest and shoulders, fists twisting in the ragged remains of his shirt. Finn can’t get his fingers to work, presses the heel of his hand into her back instead, mouth open against her neck as he breathes her in. She clutches him tightly, using the Force to open the rest of his bindings as she lowers them both to the floor, her tiny form strong against his desperate need to be close to her.

He feels hands on his daemon, and moans painfully at the dirtiness of it. Rey pulls away and presses kisses to his brow, wetness against his face where her cheeks touch his, and hushes the pain. He manages to look past her to see Luke gently easing his daemon from the restraints, careful not to disconnect any of the tubes. For a moment he wonders why, then stills with the cold thought that he does not know if those toxins are actually keeping her alive. He finds himself suddenly grateful for the delicate way Luke picks up the cruelly medical-looking bags and contraptions that the tubes end in and cradles his daemon against his chest, even with the sick feeling of being touched spreading through his mind.

Rey pulls him back to his feet, using the Force to bolster and support him. He feels her holding him together, cradling him in her grasp as she slings his arm over her shoulder.  
Sherri snarls one last time as they turn to leave the room, and Finn glances over his shoulder.

The cat watches them go, sitting in front of Kylo Ren. Still pressed against the wall, he howls in rage and desperation as they walk away from him. 

It isn’t easy, getting back to the docking bay where Luke’s ship waits. It shocks Finn to realise that this is his rescue team, that there is no one else on the ship. He looks at Rey with a dawning understanding that she is far stronger than he knows, as she glares at Stormtroopers and snarls at blaster fire, daring the world to try and take her friends from her. Luke is quieter, holding Finn’s daemon carefully as he uses the Force to ward off the soldiers who find them. Rey has one arm free, and swings her lightsabre brilliantly around them both, deflecting fire and pushing waves of Force into their enemies, sending them flying. Finn struggles to keep himself moving with her, the warm press of Sherri’s body against his leg when he starts to stumble the only thing keeping him from pulling them both down at times.

Somehow they manage it though. They push through and win their path into the docking bay step by step. Finn wonders blurrily if Kylo Ren is still pinned to the wall under Luke’s easy strength, even as he looks up and sees Black One sitting at the opposite end of the bay.

He didn’t quite realise the keening in his throat was his own until he felt Rey sigh against him and turn to Luke.

“I have to get Poe’s ship,” Rey lifts Finn’s arm over her head, helping him to steady on his own, even as she calmly waves at a drone that had rolled towards them, sending it flying backwards. “Keep them safe for me”

Luke looked at them both for a minute, before nodding. “As if anything I said would change your mind anyway,” he tells her, a small smile curling his lips as he reaches out with the Force, slipping his support into the gaps as Rey released her grip around Finn.

Rey laughed briefly, Sherri snickering with her, before turning and running for the black X-wing. Finn watched them for a second, before Luke’s Force pushed insistently against him, and he turns and stumbles up the ramp to Luke’s ship.

He slumps against the first wall he finds, and Luke unceremoniously dumps his daemon against him before pacing quickly to the front of the ship.

Finn loses track of what happens next, as he stares down at the beautiful creature sprawled across his lap. Her warmth against his thighs feels like coming home, and he reaches tentative fingers out to curl in the warm fur on her flank. He hasn’t felt anything like this before, he thinks, not even in the wonderful moments when Flare would snuggle against him, and Poe would trace loving fingers across his spine and murmur love into his skin. Not even when he realised that he was human and someone and there were people who wanted him in their world.

He strokes her face, trembling fingers skimming over her features as he tries to learn her so well that he can never forget her again.

He falls asleep that way, hands running down her side and somehow does not dream at all.


End file.
